His eyes darted from where we came, a couple of straggling joggers passed by but never noticed us. He worked to get his cock out. A smirk crept across his face and his eyes gleamed sadistically, as if he had just bought my soul from Satan himself.
“Whoa, slow down there, cowboy, I need the dough before I blow. My policy, payment before any service is provided.”
“Of course, forty bucks, right?”
“B.J. only, right?”
He answered with a nod.
“Then yeah, now you can pay me.”
He pushed into his front pocket and pulled out the cash he tried to give me earlier. And like every prick in a business suit, he slipped it between my tits. I have hands, asshole. To make a big deal out of his classless actions would have been just wasted time, it wasn’t worth the argument. I pulled a rubber from my purse and tossed it at him.
“I don’t do bareback; cap your cock.”
Most of the time I’d put on a show, prop the rubber between my lips and teeth and roll it down as I went to town; but, fuck it, not this time. He wanted something like that, at least offer me your car or take me to a hotel room, but behind the juniper bushes? His dick wasn’t getting special treatment. He ripped open the package, pulled out the rubber and started to roll it on, I could smell that motherfucker the minute it hit the air . . . cough syrup, cherry flavor, just my luck.
“MY FUCKING FEET are killing me!” Sybil moaned as she plopped down on the couch. It was four thirty in the morning and all I wanted to do was shower, wash off the residue of the night and go to bed.
“Imagine being on your feet since three thirty in the afternoon. Talk about fucked up, I hate afternoons.”
I sat next to Sybil, kicked off my heels and started to rub my toes.
“I don’t know why you keep on going to Preacher’s Square,” she pushed.
“Because I just love being picked up on by snot-nosed pimply middle schoolboys, that’s why.”
Sybil knew Preacher’s Square was the best place to catch up when funds were falling short for the month. It was a necessary evil in our profession, but we had to go where the money talked and the bullshit walked and trust me, everything about selling sex is ripe with bullshit.
“Was the take at the Square any good?”
“Five hundred thirty-five bones. Listen, I am beat. I’m gonna take a shower and hit the sack. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
I felt like I was hit by a truck. Not only did I pull off the nonstop suck-n-fuckfest down at the Square, but then I went straight to my evening pavement. Tonight I upped my prices and pulled in a couple foreigners; they paid big bucks to watch me masturbate. Whatever turns you on and pays my bills. My entire take was fifteen hundred bucks. I had one condom left when I called it a night and it wasn’t the Magnum; like I said, hit by a truck.
After my shower, I got ready for bed while I watched the time tumble past five thirty in the morning. It was a quarter to six and I was wide awake. Sure my body was exhausted, the tequila and pot were wearing thin in my blood but my mind wouldn’t shut off. This was the time when childhood memories would come at me with a vengeance; I had no way of containing the dusty clouds of delusion. Keeping my heart on lockdown only produced a selfless, cold-hearted bitch who believed if she didn’t invest, she wouldn’t lose. Preservation was my only friend. The problem with that was when I was exhausted and the haunting memories boiled to the surface to punish me, there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop them. Like the imprisoned child I was, these were the nights that shattered me.
‘You’re making me do this my little Rosalie. You give me this sickness, you see, you keep causin’ all of this in my body.’ He grabs his sickness. His eyes are dark, his fingernails are sharp.
Pain.
Searing pain.
Tears roll down past my temples, tangling in my hair.
Tangles.
I’m cold.
I’m in my bedroom alone. All alone, a moment seared into my soul, another vision, feeling, my body purging my past.
I get out of my bed and pace back and forth across my room.
“I can’t keep it in any longer,” I yell at myself in the mirror. I’ve done my best to hold it in for three long years. I never told a soul. I’m being eaten from the inside out.
My stomach twists at the thought of telling anyone. I can’t. But I need to.
‘Rosalie, you think by holding in your secret for three short years, anyone is going to care? Wake up girl, nobody cares.’ The voice in my head pipes up and betrays me.
“My stomach hurts, I can’t stop the truth from bubbling out. I have to tell someone,” I holler out loud.
I need the voice to understand.
It’s me, it’s me that needs to find a way to stop feeling so yucky so dirty for what happened.
‘Then what? What do you think anyone’s going to do with that information? It’s too late to do anything. Keep it in your soul. No matter what. Trust me,’ the voice in my head snaps.